The Mermaid Chair (2005)
“This after twisting around half the night in the sheets in guilt and alarm at what I’d done.After Hugh had left yesterday, I’d sat beside the slave cemetery for an hour or more, until the paralysis wore off and the paroxysms of terror began. What have I done?I’d called him last night, twice. He hadn’t answered even though he’d had plenty of time to get back home. I hadn’t known why I was calling, or what I would say if he answered. Probably I would have repeated a long litany of I’m sorry, I’m ...sorry. What I’d done seemed impossible to me, completely disorienting. Like I’d amputated something—not a mere digit on my hand but my marriage, the symbiosis that had sustained me. My life had been beautifully contained within Hugh’s, like one of those Russian nesting dolls, encompassed in wifeness, in a cocoon of domesticity. And I’d demolished it. For what?I’d sat on the edge of the bed remembering odd bits and pieces of things. The time when Dee was small and Hugh had sung the Humpty Dumpty song to her while balancing an egg on the edge of the table, how he’d let it go, demonstrating Humpty’s great fall.MoreLess
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